Why you might feel worse to start with going animal-based…
When people move over to animal based, they can sometimes feel temporarily worse and blame this on the new diet and lifestyle changes. They might feel a worsening of their symptoms, old symptoms all of a sudden coming back or totally new one’s appearing.
What important to remember here is that it’s almost never their new dietary choice that is the problem but instead the many years of choosing unnatural foods, drinks and lifestyles that came before hand that is the real cause.
We forget the damage we’ve been doing eating huge amounts of oxalate rich ‘superfoods’, by eating low-fat, consuming lots of seeds oils, eating very little protein, eating soya and gluten products, or just relying heavily on carbs/sugars for ‘fuel’. So, when we start fuelling ourselves in the right way and stop starving and poisoning ourselves our body stops being in survival mode and starts getting down to business again and in doing so it may try to dump toxins/poisons/unnatural things it’s store and it may have trouble converting back to its natural fuel source as it’s had to adapt to the wrong fuel source for so long. However, these are all temporary and the transition to full health is totally worth the odd hurdle or two (I’ve tried them all on for size myself ha).
Here’s are the main concerns people may have when transitioning to animal-based and one of the reasons it’s best to take it slowly….
- Oxalate dumping (old symptoms/injuries returning, inflammation, kidney pain, grit in eyes, tartar on teeth/gum issues, gallstones, gout, kidney stones, tonsil stones and more)
- Fat adaption issues (bloating, diarrhea, constipation, gas, sickness, malabsorption, tired, acne and more)
- Carb withdrawal (convincing yourself you cannot function without carbs/feel better on carbs, intense cravings, searching for other high spiking foods and drinks instead, headaches, tired, grumpy and more)
- Dopamine withdrawal (many carby/sugary produce give us a lovely dopamine hit, so you’ll often feel all of the above and more when you cut these out)
- Opioid withdrawal (things like gluten are mild opioids, as well as giving us a dopamine fix, this is why they are so addictive and why you can feel crappy and cravy giving them up)
- Histamine / MCAS flares (sometimes bought on by oxalate dumping, or mould and sometimes just because there are a lot of changes happening in the body at once and we may also be eating tons of aged animal produce all of a sudden and it’s a shock to the system.
As I mentioned above, I’ve struggled with all of these at some point and often a few at the same time. This is one of the many reasons I wanted do some different nutritional trainings (than I have previously done) because I know what it’s like to go through many transitioning hiccups and I also know how amazing you can feel when you are not hiccupping and felt a deep desire to help others so they did not need to struggle as much as I did!
If you are struggling right now, it’s almost certainly not because you have chosen to be animal-based, but instead because of the choices made in the years previously and all these can and will change!
Here’s the training I completed earlier this year that may interest some of you: https://www.carnivorecoachinternational.com/courses/carnivore-coach-certification
Website: www.faithcanter.com
Telegram Channel: https://t.me/faithcanter
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/faithcanter/?hl=en
SubStack: https://substack.com/@faithcanter
